Scripture Reflection, May 18: Holy Trinity Sunday

Scripture Readings:
Exodus 34:4b-6, 8-9
Daniel 3:52, 53, 54, 55, 56
2 Corinthians 13:11-13
John 3:16-18

This Sunday we celebrate the mystery of the Holy Trinity in a special way. In honoring the Trinity we recognize that our God’s essence is a mystery that stretches far beyond our comprehension. As our creed affirms, God exists in three distinct persons, yet God is in no way divided. Our tradition affirms, like Judaism and Islam, that we too are strict monotheists, believing in one God and one God only. At the same time, we believe that God has been revealed to us in three unique realities.

There is a story about Saint Augustine walking along the beach lost in thoughts of the Trinity. On his walk Saint Augustine encounters a boy with a bucket who is running back and forth filling his bucket with water from the ocean and emptying it into a hole that he has dug in the sand. In this encounter St. Augustine comes to realize that just as the boy could never empty the entire ocean into a hole, so too can a human never understand the infinite mystery that is the Holy Trinity.

This story teaches a valuable lesson that we humans are too often inclined to forget. We cannot know everything. We can know and discover a lot but some things are simply beyond our finite minds. Why would we make such an audacious assumption anyway? Most of us haven’t even explored all the features on our cell phone, why would we think we could understand the inner workings of the Creator?

Instead of dwelling on what we cannot know, perhaps it would be more useful to explore the ways that God touches us in our daily lives. Let us discover the Trinity through our own experience.

We humans need something greater than ourselves to look up to and find hope in, to worship and put our trust in. Our experience on Earth is an experience of limitation. To paraphrase Saint Paul, we cannot do what we want and cannot help but do what we do not want. Regardless of which latest and greatest self-help book we are reading, the human experience comes with its share of fear, anxiety and doubt. To be human, as Jesus’ agony in the garden shows us, is to deal with our limitation, not to transcend it.

Yet, when we imagine God as only the something greater, God easily becomes remote, removed from our everyday life and unaffected by our very real struggles here on earth. In addition to the God who transcends our limitations, we also need a companion. We need a God to walk with us, to experience life’s trials at our side. We need a friend and companion. We need a role model who can show us what it means to be human. In these human needs we discover a place for the Father and the Son. The Father is all that we are not and yet the Son has walked with us here on Earth.

In our part of the world, with our particular social, philosophical, and religious heritage, we have often lost focus on the balanced coexistence of the Trinity. Many times our emphasis has rested on only the Father and the Son and we have forgotten the Spirit. This neglect has had damaging effects. The Father is the eternal, the transcendent, the unknowable. The Son is the personal, the good Shepherd, and the unwavering companion. But the Holy Spirit is the verb that animates the trinity; the Spirit is life, breath and inspiration. The Spirit is comfort, joy, hope.

We need the Spirit active in the world to stir faith within us. To call us to task each day to live the faith we affirm. Throughout scripture the Spirit is the agent of God’s creative and salvific activity. The Spirit swept like a wind over the waters at the onset of creation, the Spirit was the breath of life breathed into Adam and the Spirit compelled the prophets to fulfill missions that they had almost unanimously rejected. The Spirit stirred in the womb of Mary and descended upon Jesus at his baptism in the Jordan. And days after Christ had given up his Spirit on the cross, the Spirit was poured out upon the apostles like fire and fortified them to preach the word, to travel to distant lands and to found the church.

The Spirit is the voice of God that calls us to worship. Without the Spirit we are left with a scene that is too common in this part of the world, churches with worshipers who are willing to affirm doctrine but unwilling to let their faith transform their lives. When we look to a spiritless Godhead our faith suffers because the action, the life and the passion are removed. We may come to know Christ, but we still need guidance. We need a Spirit of Life to show us the possibilities that lie ahead.

On this Trinity Sunday let us confess our neglect of all that God is. Let us open our hearts to the movements of the Spirit that we may come to know a loving God who is deeply concerned with our hopes and fears. And let us be open to the chance that the Spirit of Life may call us to action so that we may discover a life of faith, a life of abundance.

By Jake Kohlhaas

Jake is a Bernardin Scholar at Catholic Theological Union and is currently working as the youth minister for Edison Park Lutheran Church in Chicago